


No Holocaust for the Weary

by lost_loves



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Season/Series 10 Spoilers, X-Files revival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-12 05:51:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4467809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_loves/pseuds/lost_loves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The apocalypse doesn't come, and Mulder and Scully are unprepared.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Holocaust for the Weary

Whenever she goes to the supermarket in 2012 she buys cans of food. Just a few. Just in case.

He insists on answering the door at all times. She doesn’t know where he stores the things he accepts from the UPS man, but she knows he buys them because one day the credit card company calls her to check that the order for three Kevlar vests from China is legitimate. Two adult, one teen.

‘I expect so,’ she says. She doesn’t ask Mulder.

In October they go to the shooting range. ‘For old time’s sake,’ he says. Her hands shake when they pick up the gun but she hits all bullseyes. She is ready.

*

In December she goes to the mall. She buys presents for her mom, Bill and Tara and Matthew, Charlie. On the cards she writes ‘All the best for 2013’.

‘Would you like a seasonal box for an extra dollar?’ the woman at the post office asks unenthusiastically.

‘Yes please.’

She buys Mulder a solar powered lighter because that sort of thing always comes in useful.

*

On December 21 her hands shake as she signs prescriptions.

‘You’re doing so well, Hayley,’ she tells a little girl who is recovering from knee surgery. ‘Keep it up and you’ll be home for Christmas.’ Hayley’s mom smiles down at her and up at Scully.

‘You really think so?’ she asks.

Scully tries to smile but she hasn’t all 2012 and she can barely raise the corners of her lips.

She buys champagne on the way home and tells Mulder one of her patient’s parents gave it to her.

‘An early Christmas present,’ she says. ‘Isn’t that nice?’

He doesn’t usually like champagne but he drinks it tonight.

At midnight they sit on the deck and look at the stars. Their chairs are close together and he slings his arm out over the side of his with deliberate casualness. She puts her hand in his. He clutches hard for a long time, only letting up when he falls asleep. She watches the dawn and starts at every noise.

In the morning she makes coffee and brings him a mug.

‘Don’t go to work today,’ he says, taking it. His voice sounds normal but words have never been their most important form of communication, and the silence that follows is pleading.

‘I have to,’ she says at last, watching the birds. ‘I have patients.’

On her lunchbreak she helps some nurses put up a Christmas tree. They let her place the star on top and she thinks of angels. On her drive home she cries at the sunset.

Mulder is on the couch, eyes on the TV with a radio either side of his head, each set to a different station.

‘Have you done _anything_ today?’ she asks, switching them all off. ‘You haven’t even changed clothes.’

‘Turn them back on,’ he hisses. For a moment she is afraid he’ll hit her.

‘I’m making lasagne for dinner,’ she says as a peace offering.

‘I’ll take a shower,’ he calls the truce.

After dinner she has a bath. She keeps an eye on the stars through the small, high window in their bathroom. They flicker but don’t move. Half way through the radio comes back on and she lets her head drift under the water.

On Christmas morning he tells her sheepishly that he didn’t get her anything.

‘I guess I was distracted,’ he says.

‘I didn’t get you anything either,’ she lies.

*

In 2013 she eats canned apricot with breakfast, takes canned tuna to work and makes a lot of lentil casseroles. He doesn’t ask why all their meals suddenly come from cans and she doesn’t apologise. She picks up extra shifts at the hospital. She gets used to writing ‘2013’.

Their silences used to be comfortable but now she can feel his frustration. She knows it bothers him to leave his study to sit with her in the evenings, to pretend there is nothing more to fear. He says as much one June night, when she makes him play cards.

‘That’s not our responsibility any more,’ she says evenly, dealing them each a hand.

‘I can’t just sit here and play hearts while they’re still out there.’

_You have 12 hours, 6 days a week without me,_ she thinks. _Isn’t that enough?_

Even when they make love he seems distracted, his thoughts on the articles pinned on the walls of his study.

‘I’m doing this for us,’ he sulks one Sunday, when she asks him to go for a walk and he says he has work to do. ‘For our future.’

‘What about our present?’

Neither of them have ever done well at living in the present, but they used to try harder.

On December 21 and 22 she does a double night shift and sleeps through the days. He kisses her hello and goodbye and that is all she sees of him for 48 hours. She only realises this three days later, on Christmas Day, when they spend all day in bed and she finds his presence cloying.

She leaves on January 1 2014 and doesn’t cry. He watches her come out of their bedroom with her travelling clothes and her suitcase and looks confused.

‘Did I forget about a conference?’ he asks.

‘No.’

He looks confused a while longer and then he looks upset. ‘Oh,’ he says.

‘I can’t live like this any more, Mulder. This isn’t our fight.’

He says nothing while she talks practicalities. She’ll keep paying the bills, at least for now. She’s taking the car but the farmer next door is selling a ute at a fair rate. She’ll give him a forwarding address when she gets one, not that she gets much personal mail. He takes the piece of paper containing the information which she has systematically typed, deleted and re-typed over the past week. He looks like Caesar facing his last betrayer.

‘I can’t just sit here and let it happen, Scully.’

‘I know,’ she says, and walks out.

*

The motel is meant to be temporary but she never gets around to finding anywhere else. She likes to lie in bed and hear the pipes above, the thuds next door, the traffic outside. It helps her feel less alone.

For the first time in 12 years she is alone.

Maybe that’s why she accepts Tad’s invitation, offered over the head of an eleven-year-old niece he visits on her ward. Maybe it’s that he doesn’t sound like he thinks she’ll accept. Dana Scully never backs away from a challenge.

‘I saw you on TV the other day,’ are the first words Mulder says to her in one and a half years. He never answers her calls so she just leaves him detailed instructions in voicemails.

She hadn’t realised that the local Republican convention was important enough to make the news, though of course she’d seen the cameras. She is suddenly glad she wore such a cute outfit and mortified she let Tad put his arm around her.

‘Mulder, I – ’

‘It’s fine,’ he says. ‘I just thought you should know.’

‘Maybe I should come and see you this weekend.’ She pauses. ‘I miss you.’

‘Now’s not a good time,’ he says, and hangs up.

She breaks it off with Tad after that. She takes so many shifts that her boss suggests she might like to leave some for her co-workers. The people at the health food shop next to the motel know her by name.

When she isn’t at work she lies on her bed staring at the ceiling and wishing she could see the stars.

*

‘Dana, it’s me.’

‘What do you want Tad?’ she sighs. She must have put something red in with the whites because now all her best shirts are pink. ‘I got your New Year’s message.’

‘Er, yeah. Not one of the finest decisions I’ve made after a few spritzers,’ he says. ‘I’m not calling about – you know, us. Though there still can be an us, if you want, I will always leave the door open to an us.’

‘What is it?’ She puts the shirts in the dryer anyway. Damn, she’s out of coins.

‘I’ve had a tip-off. Strictly on the down-low, you understand, the government’s shutting it up as best they can. It’s about… well, you know. Invasion.’ She can hear him sigh. ‘I thought you might want to know. I thought you might want to tell Mulder.’

It takes two minutes after she leaves the voicemail for Mulder to call her back, and they are on the plane to DC by nightfall.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this doesn't happen in the revival, but here's my take.


End file.
